After my fiance got sick at after a sushi dinner, I always check the health inspection report before I go. Our state lists the specific violations online -- useful, but occasionally gross!

In a former life, my job took me into every kitchen of the city I worked in...believe me a DPH check is very necessary.

I'll notice them, but unless the rating has gone below 80%, I don't really care. Generally, it's borderline impossible to get a 100% rating on one of those tests to begin with. And you don't know what they were marked off for. It could be something as simple as an employee wearing too many earrings. Or having a drink in the wrong spot. But if it was a rating like the one in the window...I wouldn't be too worried. Four points off really isn't that big of a deal.

I regularly check the health inspections on the restaurants i go to regularly. In this case "what you dont know wont hurt you" is a lie.

Of course! But once when I was younger and working at a restaurant I left the bottle of window cleaner too close to where we kept food, and our restaurant got marked down 5 or 6 points even though the window cleaner was in a closed bottle and had no chance of getting anywhere near food. So, I try to look and see if points were docked for something like that or for something more serious like improper refrigerator temperatures.

They don't do this where I live, but if they did, I honestly wouldn't look at it.

I'll note them, especially if it's an unfamiliar place that looks like a dive. But I've seen some decent, reputable restaurants fail inspections for small things like everything not being kept at exactly the right temperature... and places that should be shut down, because I've heard nothing but unpleasant stories about, somehow pass.

I'm not sure how well my own kitchen would rate.

I check them in passing but wouldn't turn away from a restaurant with a satisfactory listing. a really bad rating would turn me away, an 85 or whatever wouldn't... unless like the first poster said its a sushi place or freshness is crucial

I would take note on how the place looked from the outside and inside. If the parts where you as a guest can see are gross and unkept then for me the kitchen may as well be too.

When I worked in food microbiology, we always got the weekly health inspections for local restaurants in an email. I always liked reading them to see what they got marked down for, but I don't think they really affected my choices as far as which restaurants we went to. The only times I got concerned were when a restaurant got marked down repeatedly for really blatant problems like vermin or visible mold/spoilage on food.

I've been food poisoned in a 96 rated restaurant.
Also...
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/consumerist/2008/10/badhealth.jpg

You could be poisoned in a 100% rated restaurant too though. Just because they "pass" on inspection day, doesn't mean that they're doing it all by the book on every other day. It's easy to put on a pair of gloves when the inspector is standing there staring at you, but when you're in the middle of a dinner rush and there's no one threatening to fail you and close your restaurant, it's slightly easier to forgo the gloves.

If it's a place where I'm paying real money and sitting down, then I'll usually want an A, but for places like sketchy cheapo chinese takeout, then I'm totally ok with a B